I am Gods Gift to ESL Teachers

I am God’s gift to ESL Teachers

But not really. But sometimes I feel like am. Iºm writing in a moment of exaltation, so please allow me to pat myself on the back for a minute…

After sign-up for English classes, there was a total of 38 people interested. Fine with me. Good start. After the first week of English classes, there were 62. Wow! Word had gotten around that my classes were, and I quote, “fun and interesting and people were actually learning.” Tourists passing through town are stopping at my house and telling me that people are walking up to them and asking how they are and what are their names and where do they come from. When they ask them where they learned their English, they tell them...Teacher Caley! That weekend (sign up was officially closed at that point), after the second week of classes, I was more or less inundated by people requesting to be let in to the class late. They were promising to come to every class, never be late, take good notes, work extra hard to catch up. Against the advice of my Association’s president, I accepted everyone, and set up a full-day “seminar” to catch everyone up on hat they had missed. Everyone showed up, everyone paid attention, everyone took notes, everyone asked question. I’ve now got 112 students in four classes from 5 to 9 at night, covering the entire spectrum of ages (8 to 49) and experience (some have never heard a word, others have been studyinh it in school for 5 or six years), and we’re really making progress.

We started with simple “Good evening. Good evening. Hi my name is _____. What is your name? My name is _____. Pleased to meet you. Nice to meet you too. How are you? I am fine. And you? I’m well, thanks. Ok, good night. See you later.” Later, I taught them “from”, numbers, ordinals, days and months, and we added “How old are you? I am 32. And you? I am 26. Where are you from? I am from Cape Verde. And you? I am from America.” Then, “When is your birthday? My birthday is ______. And you? My birthday is ______. Then we drew smiley faces and blank faces and sad faces and learned some vocabulary like fine, sad, ok, well, so-so, sick, tired, happy, terrific, and then we learned Why and Because and then they started asking each other “Why are you sad?” Then we added more vocabulary and introduced the verb “to be” and What, Where, Who, When, Why and How, “to like,” “to want” and “to be able to” and augmented our vocabulary and introduced some prepositions so we can talk about locations of things. We sing the alphabet song every day at the end of class, we translate the music of (the much beloved in Cape Verde) Brian Adams because they can all sing the words even though they don’t know what they mean. (NOTE to future ESL teachers, be prepared to explain alternate significance of the number 69 if you translate the song “Summer of 69.” They WILL ask.) Thursday is FUN day. I read some poetry to prove the English language can be beautiful (I recommend Nothing Gold Can Stay for a great example) and then I read something from a book of Kriolu poetry I found used on Amazon.com of all places. They’ve never seen their own language in print or writing (Kriolu is, as of now, only a spoken language…there is no official alphabet, no spelling or pronunciation rules yet) and they are pretty much moved to tears to see it printed in an actual hard-bound book. Its like an original version f the King James Bible to them. Although I don’t speak it (Kriolu) well yet, I know more about it, grammatically, linguistically and phonetically than they do, and they CRAVE information about it. Then (on Thursdays) we have games and competitions (What is the third letter of the alphabet? What day was yesterday? How do you change the sentence “They are from France.” into a question? How do you pronounce the number 1,873? For real laughs, I ask them to pronounce the number 3,333 because they are, as yet, incapable of making the “th” sound. They say Tree Tousand Tree Hundid Turdy Tree.) During these exercises I give away some or all of loot I have received from home. Starbursts are, as far as my students are concerned, absolutely the greatest invention in the history of mankind. (SOMEONE SEND ME SOME MORE!!!!) Attendance was 100%. There were kids peering in the windows of the school, people lined up outside my classroom 15 minutes before class in a country where people regularly show up 2 hours late for work or church or anything else you can think of. Twice, after losing power in town, I tried to cancel class and was met woth outrage and forced to give classes by candlelight. Friday is movie night, where I make pots and pots of pipoka (popcorn, which is REAL cheap to make) and show a film from America (hopefully with Portuguese subtitles) and explain in Kriolu parts that they don’t understand. They LOVE movie night, and watch (at least in the case of the new Transformers movie) with mouths agape…like kids inside Toys R’ Us for the first time.

Than last week a setback. Attendance plummeted. The people that did make it to class were looking at their watches, even though they donºt have watches. Even my Golden Ace in the Hole, the undefeatable music of Michael Bolton, also insanely, perversely popular here, failed miserably. Someone actually got up and left in the middle of the class that night. I was devastated. Finally I asked Jailson, the coolest kid in town, why people were dropping out. He explained that it was only for the next couple of days, as the European Champions League (soccer) was having its final matches during class hours. This is essentially a 5 day Super Bowl that oly the biggest nerds in town would miss out on. I cancelled classes for the last 2 days and yesterday, my classroom was full again. Today, to regenerate interest, I conducted a village-wide scavenger hunt. This afternoon, I pasted letters in hidden spots all around Chan di Igreja, and then in class I taught them prepositional phrases (behind the church, under the stairs, on the side of the tree, behind the door, under you chair). Then I gave them a list of clues to find the jumbled letters. They had to run all over creation, finding the letters according to the clues and unscramble them to make the sentence “Hello, how are you?” The winners from each class got to pick from a bag of goodies (Everyone chose Juicy Fruit, or Choosey Foot as its known here). They went absolutely bat-shit crazy for it. I was given several hugs tonight.

Then, just minutes ago, at almost midnight here, I went on to the roof to have a cigarette. (First one in 3 days Mom!) While up there, I heard a conversation from a thatch-roofed house below. Know what I heard? People Practicing. “Good evening. Good evening. Hello, my name is Jandira. What is your name? My name is Jaicy. Pleased to meet you. Nice to meet you too. How are you? I am fine.” Etc. Etc. Etc. They even improvised the dialogue we’ve been practicing by adding separate elements that we’ve been working on. (I heard Jandira ask and Jaicy reply, almost correctly, “What is your mother name? My mother name is Fatinha.”) I’ll admit that I cried and laughed a little bit and felt a swell of love and pride. My students. (After hearing that conversation, I’ve resolved to teach the possessive case “ ‘s “ as soon as possible.)

Anyway, it’s only been a month of classes so far and I know we’ve got a long way to go, but I’m encouraged and excited and challenged in earnest each day. Imagine teaching, while speaking in a language you barely understand, why you can say “The circle is in front of the square.” But you have to say “He is at the front of the line.” (It’s the little things, like the “th” sound, or “at the front of “ vs. “in front of,” or explaining why we use about a dozen words where in Kriolu they may use only one (over here para means, through, at, for, into, through, stop and a few dozen over things), or how in the HELL can we not have the English equivalents of the words “boquat” or “brop,” which they use in every other sentence. (The closest thing I can think of is “some” and “wild”, respectively, but they don’t mean exactly that either.)

Point of all this is, I’m having a hell of a time, and a hell of a good time, with this teaching English business, and couldn’t be happier about my experience so far. I come home at night exhausted and hoarse and covered in chalk dust…and I LOVE it. If anyone is tinkering with the idea of teaching ANYTHING, I vote that you give it a try. There’s nothing like it that I’ve known.